Deftones: Deftones : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The mood swings like a wrecking ball on the Deftones' fourth album -- this is metal that crushes, then soothes; collapses, then soars. Headbangers will find moments of extreme violence to savor on Deftones, but this Sacramento, California, quintet also bears traces of blissed-out bands such as My Bloody Valentine and AR Kane -- art rockers who took overdriven guitars to rapturous heights. Singer Chino Moreno sounds like he's conversing with a choir of voices inside his troubled skull. He's the most Dada of the new-metal screamers: sobbing, stoned and strangely sensual, when he isn't shredding his tonsils. The band brings the requisite brutality, but this album delivers chills when it creeps past the margins of modern post-Korn heavy music: the spooky spaghetti-western drones that hover like vultures over "Death Blow," the space-is-the-place liftoff of "Minerva" and the ambient doomscape "Lucky You," which might be worth an approving smirk from the Aphex Twin. Just when new metal seemed utterly played out, Deftones blows open the possibilities.